o accompanied us in our morning's ramble, had
served his time with a cotton manufacturer. But the confinement not
agreeing with his delicate constitution, the burgomaster had brought
him home; and he now officiates as a sort of waiter in the hotel, with
the understanding that at his father's decease, or perhaps before it,
he shall succeed to the hotel itself.

In listening to such details one hour was spent. Another passed away in
watching from the window such objects as this most quiet of quiet
Bohemian burghs might produce. And of these there was one which, being
associated with the memory of other days, interested me not a little.
There is a fountain in the middle of the market-place, into which one
stream of fresh water is continually flowing, while another drains off
from it. Hither the women bring their clothes to be washed; not in the
fountain itself, but in their own tubs, which they range round it; and
the proceedings of one of these industrious damsels amused me much. She
filled her tub to the brim, and then kilting her petticoats, set to
work tramping with might and main, precisely as, in years long gone by,
I have seen a Scotch girl do, on the Back-walk at Stirling, or the
Calton Hill in Edinburgh. What a strange thing is association, and how
easily is it called into play by the veriest trifles. The woman's legs
had nothing to boast of in the way of symmetry, but I confess that I
watched them, in their alternate rise and fall, with a degree of
interest such as I have not for many a day bestowed on any other pair
of understandings, whether male or female.

The legs at length disappeared, for the curtain of the petticoats was
dropped, and with it fell all the bright and glowing visions of
boyhood, in which I had been indulging. I felt once more that I was
neither in life's prime, nor a denizen of "bonny Scotland;" so I
listened to certain suggestions which my young companion had for some
time been making, and agreed to accompany him a little way down the
course of the Bober, while he tried to fish. We went accordingly, but
to no purpose. The Bober does not become a trout-stream till long after
it has lost sight of the source from whence it springs, and we had our
walk, with the conversation of the young burgomaster and a friend of
his, a learned baker in the village, as our reward. The historical
researches of the latter gentleman had been very extensive, and he
possessed a laudable zeal to make this known. H